Nothing Could Drag Me Away
by Miss-Murdered
Summary: Duo reflects on his feelings for Heero when he sits by his bedside in the hospital. 1x2. One-shot.


Disclaimer: I own nothin'

Pairings/Warnings: 1x2, past 2xH, side 3x5, implied sex, angst, language, sap

A/N: Beta'd by ELLE and based on the song _Wild Horses _by the Rolling Stones. I have an ambition to get all my random fics onto here. Let's see if it happens...

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**Nothing Could Drag me Away **

I didn't know who'd brought the damn flowers but the roses were starting to die, brown around the edges of the petals. I thought it was a weird choice, you know, roses being all about love and shit. They were yellow though. Guess they were meant to be cheery as I'd read once that men bought red roses if they wanted sex and pink if they loved you or whatever. It must've been one of Hil's chick magazines as I had no idea where the hell I woulda read that. I also wondered why the hell I was thinking about goddamn roses so much but then I'd been sitting in the same room for nearly five weeks twenty-four-seven. My inner monologue had to go somewhere, you know.

My eyes drifted to the grapes and a part of me wanted to think about who decided that's what you brought sick people but instead I let my head slump into my hands, rubbed my temples and looked up towards the hospital bed.

It still made me feel a little sick even though I'd been here every damn day. To see him like that. The great Heero Yuy brought down by some virus. The guy I'd shot and was fucking fine, who jumped outta high rise buildings as though it were nothing, who self-destructed and saved the world was brought down by some virus strain that fucked with his genetic experimentation and meant that he was here, unconscious, his breathing even, level, the steady beep of heart monitors indicating each beat.

I stretched, my bones popping, and yawned. I'd not slept properly for damn weeks. It was funny, at first, when he came back, he was in quarantine in the basement of Prev HQ and they tried to make me leave then. Oh fuck did they try. I admit, I'm a stubborn son of a bitch – more than that, I was just not leaving him. It was a point blank refusal on my part. Sally spoke quietly, telling me everything, telling me that he was unconscious and there was no point. Fuck, he was behind glass, the quarantine area a see through box, but I wouldn't leave. Just try me when I get like that – a whole troop of mobile dolls and Treize Khushrenada's ghost stood no chance.

They eventually gave up. I'm just stubborn, I'm tenacious and in my life, I hold onto shit that's important way too tight. Hey, I'm a dude with a three foot braid – hell, if that ain't any indicator then lord knows what is. My life would be easier without it – not gonna get caught in machinery or shit at the scrapyard – but I remember soft fingers running through it as a kid and I remember Heero, the first time I let him see me with it down, reaching out and brushing his fingers through it before I rebraided so we could screw.

Those first weeks had been hell. I'd sat on one side of glass, him on the other, as he flickered in and out of consciousness. One day apparently it broke – the fever, whatever, and he was awake and at the glass.

"You're a smart guy, you can read my lips, right?" I'd asked, looking at him, grey sweatpants and t-shirt too big, thin looking and making him smile a little. Hey, I don't remember what exactly I'd said then but he knew the moment I was referencing.

"Stay," he said and I nodded, reading his lips.

"Nowhere else I'd rather be, 'Ro."

I reached my hand up to the glass, spread my fingers and he put his on the other side, connected through the transparency, and I saw how different our hands looked – me so damn pale, my fingers longer but I could see the scars across his palms, knew how they felt. And I looked at him – tried to get across all I damn felt – until pretty much a contender for one of the worst moments in my life happened. And fuck, with my life that is saying something. He fell to the floor, fitted, his eyes rolling back into his head and I was throwing my hands against the glass, watching as doctor in gloves and masks stabilised him. I'd never felt so goddamn powerless. And I hated every minute of it.

Now he was in the ICU, the whole virus shit still unclear. There had been some attempt to try and find intel about what Dr. J did years ago. But nothing remained of his labs on L1 – everything those old dudes did lost to computer viruses and explosions.

So now Heero was out of immediate danger but still comatosed, fed through tubes, and occasionally those eyes would flicker and I'd call for the doc or whatever but usually it meant shit. And I'd been sitting here for nearly a goddamn month.

I left a little now. The scrapyard was kinda fucked without me and Hilde was doing her best and all but the guys we'd hired were no Duo Maxwell, all I'm saying, and their work rates and skill didn't touch mine. She made sure the bills were paid, she made me leave his side to go to a diner for lunch and she brought me spare clothes or whatever.

She hugged me a few times, let me slump onto her shoulder, let me break down a little – hell, I wouldn't do that in the hospital for the nurses to see but for her? Yeah, she'd seen shit.

And she'd push aside my hair and kiss me on the forehead. "He'll be fine. It's Heero."

That had been my mantra and I loved her for repeating it back to me. She was too damn good to me. Coming with me to earth when I relocated to Brussels under the pretence that it was better for business to be near Preventer HQ due to our contract with them and it had nothing at all to do with Mr. Anti-Social. Mr. Deep-Blue-Eyes. Mr. Fucked-Me-Raw-Against-My-Apartment-Door. Huh. Yeah, my argument had been so fucking convincing.

We tried, me and her, remembered her crying after sex – which really is not the response I wanted or usually got – running to the bathroom until I followed, and she looked up at me.

"You weren't even _there_."

That had caused me to open my mouth a little, cock my head, look at her with confusion as I stood naked in her place.

"I'm not him, right?"

Okay. At first, I denied a lot of shit regarding Heero. I was totally into him from the moment we met. Maybe not instantly as that first moment was about me shooting his ass but yeah, after me breaking him out, after stealing parts from 'Scythe, somewhere at the schools, I fell and fell goddamn hard, you know? But stuff didn't happen 'til after the war. Spent time trying to forget him afterward – every guy or chick not him but then everyone some kinda shadow of him. Had a thing for blue eyes. Had a thing for dark hair. Seemed like I was working some shit out with each lay.

The day he visited me it was like some repressed shit between us burst through as he didn't make it beyond three steps into my place until we had our hands all over each other. Fuck, I wanted him so bad it was damn embarrassing as he pushed me up against the wood, pulled down my jeans and made me shout his name, slam my fists against the door, and since then I'd been his. I just didn't go around singing it from the rooftops. Or telling him that. Or anyone that.

Hil' made fun of me. Called me his wife. Teased me relentlessly as I tried to convince myself that I was in this for some casual sex as apparently I'm a bitch to be around when he's on missions. He was a Preventer, I wasn't. I could say that situation didn't bother me at all, and I did – said it with my usual bravado – but hey, it wasn't a lie... though it was me hiding from some shit. Maybe I didn't wanna kill again or be involved in a fight I didn't believe in and a world I thought I'd already saved but I wanted to stand beside him. I wanted to be his back up and shit, maybe it stung a little that I wasn't – that I was considered too volatile, that I'd failed psyche 101 or whatever, but I dealt.

I wished I could but instead, I took every opportunity I had with him – his visits to the yard, screwing around in the office and spending long weekends in my bed, each kiss, each fuck searing through my barriers so that it had become something else somewhere. Hell, I was just as happy lying in his arms, against his chest as we watched some dumbass action film or some documentary as I was when his hips were snapping into me and I was using my arms to stop my head from hitting the headboard. And I wasn't fucking sure exactly when it had happened.

The day I got the call, I didn't damn believe it. I was next of kin on his medical forms so I had been called before to supervise his scrawny ass when he was being treated but I never expected to see him as he was. And I didn't deal well.

Trowa got a broken nose for his trouble – my logic being that he was his fucking partner and shoulda stopped it from happening. I guess, logically, I knew that Trowa couldn't stop airborne pathogens any more than I could have but as he'd arrived back, immune and fine, Wufei in his hospital room as he was checked out and tested, I lost it. Wufei pulled me off him, I know that much, but apart from that I don't remember much – I was pissed and emotional and fucking tired. And jealous. My stomach in goddamn knots and though 'Fei and Tro' were the world's most low-key couple, I saw the way their hands brushed and their eyes met and fuck I hated them for it.

Now at least his nose didn't look too bad. I joked about him growing his hair more to hide it and all. Wufei didn't find it funny.

My thoughts were distracted as one of the nurses, Kim, arrived into check vitals and she gave me a little smile.

"Still here?"

"Hell yeah."

"I know he's gorgeous but surely there's something better you could be doing?" she asked with a little tease.

I chuckled. "Naw. Nowhere I'd rather be."

She noted some stuff on a tablet and left. All the nurses were used to me now, bringing me food and gently mocking my determination to stay. But he asked me, damn it, through the glass and there was no way I was gonna leave him now.

Tonight was another night I'd sleep on the pull out in my clothes, another night where I'd be lulled to sleep by the sound of his breathing and his heart beat and remembering things as they had been before. When he had his arms around me from behind as I made coffee, his lips against my neck, when he made me see stars with his body, when he gave me that little smile that no one else got. So goddamn small but proved everything. That yeah, we didn't admit this shit but he was in love with me as much as I was with him. Those were my last thoughts as I curled up, a homemade knitted blanket over me, as I thought about what I'd do, what I'd say when he woke up.

I'd drifted to sleep when the heart rate monitor beeps increased and I was on my feet before my brain entirely caught up – instinct kicking in – and he was panicking, waking up damn confused.

"Heero."

I said his name and I saw his eyes half open as he thrashed a little and I repeated his name over and over, standing beside him, a hand on his chest through the hospital gown and one on his cheek. His eyes flicked open fully.

"Duo?" His voice was cracked, strained.

"Yeah, it's me."

He nodded imperceptibly against the pillows, the movement making his dark hair fall over his eyes, me brushing it aside though his eyes were shut again, his breathing returning to a rhythm that indicated sleep.

His lips moved, a single world, and even as I heard nurses enter – the soft squeak of shoes on linoleum – I didn't move away, not yet.

"Stay," he said.

I leaned in, kissed his slightly parted lips and whispered against them.

"Nothing could drag me away."


End file.
